Bringing five expos - Buildings India 2017 expo, Solar India 2017 expo, Transport India 2017 expo, Smart Cities India 2017 expo and Water India 2017 expo - under one roof, the vision of One Mega Event, hosted by the Exhibitions India Group, is to help develop attractive and safe cities that evoke pride and a sense of belonging among citizens.

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Building on the success of the previous two international Smart Cities expos, the Exhibitions India Group plays host to One Mega Event: Smarter Solutions for a Better Tomorrow. The event will take place at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi during May 10-12, 2017.

To start with, Liveability Standards of 140 cities including 53 cities with population of one million and above and Smart Cities will be assessed. The ministry has already invited bids for selecting the agency for carrying out the assessment based on the parameters evolved by the ministry.

It has come out with a detailed document on "Methodology for Collection and Computation of Liveability Standards in Cities" for the benefit of states and cities.

Cities will be assessed on 15 core parameters relating to governance, social infrastructure pertaining to education, health and safety and security, economic aspects and physical infrastructure like housing, open spaces, land use, energy and water availability, solid waste management and pollution. Cities will be ranked based on Liveability Index that would cover a total of 79 aspects.

NEW DELHI: Alappuzha in Kerala is a "waste smart" city according to recent assessment by a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) team. Reason? It has managed to achieve 100% waste segregation in 12 of the city's 23 wards. It doesn't landfill, instead a majority of the households have biogas plants and composting systems. But as per the Centre's recent Swachch Survekshan survey 2017, Alappuzha ranks at 380.

The top three "cleanest" cities according to the Swachch survey—Indore, Bhopal and Visakhapatnam, have a centralized system of waste management.

While these do have door-to-door waste collection and efficient transportation of waste, CSE points out that all three cities do not segregate waste at source and finally resort to landfilling. Very little waste is processed at source. The best practice in contrast, the world over is to segregate, recycle and process waste at source in a decentralized manner and minimize dumping. In fact, The MSW Rules, 2016 clearly state that waste needs to be segregated into three categories at the household level - wet, dry and domestic hazardous waste. Then, are the cleanest cities as per the Centre's survey really clean?

"What becomes clear is that the states that have pushed for a centralised approach towards waste management - Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh - have been given high rankings in the Survekshan results. Of the top 50 cities, 31 cities are in these three states. All these cities are pushing for cluster-based waste management approach using waste to energy plants and landfills for processing and dumping of waste," says a critique by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). At the heart of the problem is the way Centre evaluates "clean" cities, say experts.

No weightage has been given to waste segregation at source or decentralized management of waste. In fact, 40% of the points go to sweeping, collection and transportation of municipal solid waste, 20% to processing and disposal. No weightage has been given to decentralized waste management, effort to reduce dumping, recycling and reuse. Experts highlighted that there is a major stress on waste to energy plants too as many cities have started adopting it as an easy solution to deal with unsegregated waste.

A senior official at the Swachch Bharat Mission Directorate, told TOI that "most cities were not moving towards decentralized waste management which is why we didn't consider it as a parameter. It's not very well regulated in cities. But now we have decided that segregation and management of waste at source needs to be given weightage. In mega cities, composting or recycling is not an option yet..."

A similar example is of Panjim, which has virtually become "bin-free." It has a colour-coded five category waste segregation system instead.

According to CSE's documentation, waste is collected door-to-door, the generators of waste have to follow a five-way segregation system where they segregate it to wet waste, plastics, papers, cartons, glass and metals and non-recyclable materials. Wet waste is composted at decentralised compost pits in colonies. There are around 70 composting units in the city. Dry waste is brought to sorting centres, where it is sorted, the non-recyclable wastes are compressed into small bales and delivered to cement plants in Karnataka. But Panjim has been ranked at 90, despite its decentralization efforts.

"Now there are NGT guidelines that clearly lay down that there has to be segregation at source, composting, recycling and reuse of whatever is possible. The survey was conducted by a third party, they started the evaluation process before the NGT guidelines came into place and didn't incorporate these. They definitely need to be incorporated," said Shyamala Mani, professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

A silly reason. In that case best option is to drop the survey as most of the cities are not clean.

The government has allowed as many as 26 municipal corporations to issue bonds to raise funds for developing urban infrastructure under initiatives like Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT.

Banikinkar Pattanayak & Surbhi Prasad

The government has allowed as many as 26 municipal corporations — including those in New Delhi, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Nashik, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bhopal and Lucknow — to issue bonds to raise funds for developing urban infrastructure under initiatives like Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT, senior government officials told FE. It is for the first time such a large number of local government bodies have been allowed to hit the bond market.

The Union urban development ministry expects municipal bonds of Rs 7,500 crore to be issued in the current fiscal itself, said an official source. Although it’s too early to have a precise estimate of the overall bond size of these 26 corporations, as many of them are yet to initiate the processes, some analysts peg it at around Rs 10,000 crore.

The urban development ministry has proposed to offer the municipal corporations a 2% interest subsidy on the size of bonds after the finance ministry turned down its request to make gains from the municipal bonds tax-free for investors. The urban development ministry has earmarked as much as Rs 400 crore for this purpose, of which at least Rs 60 crore could be provided in the current fiscal, official sources said. The ministry is willing to consider offering higher subsidies than the Rs 400 crore if the corporations issue more bonds than assumed now, said the sources. But the 2% cap will remain.

The subsidy is intended to help the corporations, given that while they can raise funds at 8-8.5% interest through bonds that are without tax-free status, making gains tax-free for investors could enable them to raise money at a lower rate of around 7%. Rejecting the grant of tax-free status to these bonds, the finance ministry argued that any such move could distort the bond market and result in a potential tax revenue loss of Rs 180 crore a year, said the sources.

“We have decided that we will compensate the urban and local bodies (against the lack of tax-free status for bonds). This incentive will be provided from funds under the AMRUT mission,” urban development secretary Rajiv Gauba said. Pune and Ahmedabad will be among the first municipal bodies to issue bonds. The Pune Municipal Corporation has already initiated the process for a bond offering of Rs 2,300 crore, in what could be the country’s largest municipal bond issue and the first one after a gap of around two decades. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation also plans to float bonds of Rs 200 crore. The sources said the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is also eyeing Rs 1,000 crore through bonds.

The ministry has asked all the corporations to go for credit rating to be able to float bonds. This exercise of getting credit rating on such a large scale hasn’t been undertaken ever. “The municipal bond market was extremely small and the bonds were issued sporadically many years ago in a few cities, including Ahmedabad and Bangalore. And the total bond issues, cumulatively, have been of the order of just Rs 1,600-1,700 crore in all these years,” Gauba said.

The tapping of the bond market by the government was largely used to bridge the Centre’s fiscal deficit while states have been allowed intermittently to issue bonds under the Centre’s overall regulations.

Last month, the Centre allowed state government entities that are financially sound to borrow directly from the country’s bilateral official development assistance partners for implementing critical infrastructure projects. The move came amid realisation that several infrastructure projects being implemented by state government agencies, even if viable and sound, have huge funding requirements and borrowing by state governments for such projects may exhaust their respective borrowing limits.

The research also commends India's Smart City Mission for its different approach from the global conception of smart cities.The study, submitted to urban development ministry in May, says, “India's experience navigating this process will have implications and lessons for other rapidly urbanizing regions. In that way, India's smart cities can be `lighthouses' ­ not just for Indian cities but also for cities around the world.“

In recent weeks, temperatures have spiked in the lead up to the monsoon across India. People, especially the most vulnerable—children, the elderly and the poor—have suffered in the scorching heat. Deaths have been widely reported this year. And over the past four years more than, over 4,600 people have died from extreme heat, per the Indian government. Climate change is driving temperatures higher and increasing the frequency and severity of heat waves.

Faced with those challenges, cities, states and the national government are taking concrete action to prepare and protect their local communities. For example, drawing on lessons from the ground-breaking Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan, 17 cities and 9 states have adopted, or are developing, heat action plans in India this year.

Also, at the national level, the Indian Meteorological Department has stepped up with expanded forecasts to over 300 cities, and issued an early heat “outlook” in February. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) issued new national guidelines and television advertisements in local languages focused on protecting communities from extreme heat.

The 17 cities that have developed heat action plans are: Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Nagpur, Gondia, Chandrapur, Nanded, Akola, and Jalgaon in Maharashtra, as well as Bhubaneswar, Puri, Koraput, and Baleshwar in Odisha; along with new plans that have been launched or are under development in key cities in 2017, including Vijayawada/Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh, Rajkot and Surat in Gujarat, Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, Rahat in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad in Telangana. The nine Indian states that have adopted or are developing state-wide Heat Action Plans in 2017 are: Odisha, Telangana, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Haryana.

Next, this Friday (9th June), NRDC’s India team and partners are leading a workshop for journalists in Ahmedabad, and highlighting a new set of resources that demonstrate what communities and residents can do to protect themselves from the deadly heat.

Under the Smart City Mission, the Centre provides Rs 500 crore to each city over a period of 5 years for implementing various projects.
India TV News Desk, New Delhi Published on:23 Jun 2017, 4:09 PM IST

Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Rajkot in Gujarat figure in the new list of 30 cities announced today for development as smart cities under the Centre's Smart City Mission. The latest announcement takes the number of cities selected for part financing by the Centre under the scheme to 90.

Announcing the new list of smart cities at an event here, Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said that 45 cities contested for the 40 available smart city slots but only 30 were selected to ensure their feasibility and workable plans. An investment of Rs 57,393 crore has been proposed under smart city plans.

Under the Smart City Mission, the Centre provides Rs 500 crore to each city over a period of 5 years for implementing various projects.

A total of 100 cities were supposed to be selected for the Smart Cities Mission. For the remaining 10 spots, 20 cities - Itanagar, Biharsharif, Diu, Silvassa in Dadra and Nager Haveli, Kavaratti in Lakshadweep, Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai and Amaravati in Maharashtra, Imphal, Shillong, Dindigul and Erode in Tamil Nadu, Bidhannagar, Durgapur and Haldia in West Bengal, Meerut, Rai Bareilly, Ghaziabad, Sharanpur and Rampur in UP will compete.

Two years after launch of the ambitious Smart Cities project and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), the National Democratic Alliance government does not have much to showcase yet. Under the Smart Cities project, of the 2,895 projects worth Rs 1.3 lakh crore, only 181 projects (6.3 per cent) valued at Rs 6,413 crore are under implementation. Of the 4,672 projects launched under AMRUT, contracts have been awarded for only 1,075 or 23 per cent till date, reveal data accessed by Business Standard.

NEW DELHI: The roads under the jurisdiction of the New Delhi Municipal Council will soon be developed as 'smart roads' under the Smart City project of the Union government. NDMC has already started preparations for work on a pilot stretch of 31 km.

The plan was first proposed by Union minister Venkaiah Naidu in January 2017, during which it was also proposed to make Connaught Place a vehicle-free zone. However, the Connaught Place plan didn't take off after objections from the New Delhi Traders Association and lack of preparation on the NDMC's end.

Chairman of NDMC Naresh Kumar said that all roads in its jurisdiction will be developed into smart roads and special features including landscaping, vertical gardens, cycle tracks, street furnitures, plazas/eateries, pelican crossing and 3D zebra crossings will also be added.

"We have developed frames at intersections and will gradually develop them into vertical gardens. It is a new concept and will make NDMC areas greener and brighter," said Kumar.

The project will also see replacement of street lights with LED lights with the smart pole having Wi-Fi facility. The tender has been floated for the same.

"We have appointed the consultant for the project and work has already been initiated for 3D zebra crossing at many roads. The contract for developing modern street furniture has been awarded to SAIL. The work for developing the pelican crossing will be done in consultation with the Delhi Traffic Police," said a senior NDMC official.

The smart roads will also have sensor-based smart parking systems. People can book the slot using NDMC's 311 mobile app at any desired location in advance and pay through e-wallet or net banking.

NDMC has procured 55 smart poles, which will have facilities like Wi-Fi, CCTV camera, environment sensors and LED lighting. "Along with smart poles, these roads will have digital interactive information panels. People can use theses panel for registering any complaints with NDMC and can avail services online. It will take a couple of months to complete the work at the pilot stretch and the same will be replicated across the remaining ones," added the official.

He further said that point-of-delivery kiosks will be installed at all stretches under NDMC, through which people can avail services at doorsteps. These kiosks will also have video conferencing facility with NDMC officials. "It will help NDMC connect with the people. Using this facility, people can directly speak to NDMC officials and apprise them about the issues in their respective area," said the senior official.